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Alleryn de Ladinne
=Physical Description= Alleryn is tall, middle-aged, with silver hair and light brown skin. She typically wears the crimson of an Alliance Field Marshal, a pendant with the Alliance's lion head, and three rings; a de Ladinne family signet, the Field Marshal's signet, and a mysterious stone the colour of flame. =Personality= Alleryn is understandably unstable, as both a warlock and a survivor of at least a dozen major conflicts over the Three Wars period of human history including the First Battle of Stormwind, the Battle of the Thandol Span and the Massacre at the Dark Portal. However, she is often calm, reserved and on guard--dealing with social interaction mainly through sarcasm and aloofness. However, prolonged exposure to stress and conflict tend to bring out her long history of soldiering on battlefields, reducing her linguistic tendency from nobleborn to muck-born peasant, and making her far more prone to violence. =History= Born nineteen years before the First War, Alleryn de Ladinne was the fourth daughter of an out-of-the-way lordling with a small keep in the Hillsbrad region. On her twelfth birthday, one of the Magocrats of Dalaran appeared at said keep and her father hosted him to a feast. He then explained that he had been drawn here by a minor twinge; the lordling's daughter would someday, if not already, be able to access the supernatural. Already being somewhat ashamed of his youngest daughter, who had shown no inclination to learn any song, nor recite poetry nor do anything useful in the court, was glad to entrust the mages with little Alleryn. By fifteen, even those mages had noted her recalcitrance to follow Mageocracy rules and custom, her apparent fascination with crystal, and her incredible curiosity about spells revolving around plasma, flame. Tales had begun to circulate about students hearing her voice in the night. About how her competition for instructors' favours always seemed to suffer from sudden bad luck or mishap. Finally when she was sixteen, she failed to appear at role call. Some trackers were dispatched, and finally located her at the village of Southshore where they were too late to interrupt her from signing her name to a Sergeant's enlistment papers. Upon attempting to take her by force, the Magocracy were stymied by the unveiling of a decree putting the secular authority before any past allegiances after enlistment. With all the stories and reports from her instructors, the Magocracy understandably didn't try too hard to get her back after the unveiling of the decree, merely warning her squad sergeant that she was dangerous and needed to be watched. The squad sergeant reportedly chewed on his cigar for a moment, then responded, "If she wasn't dangerous, we'da sent her home." Alleryn de Ladinne's first patrol, after orientation and several interviews with the magical hierarchy in the Lordaeron Military and being granted an immediate commission of corporal based on intelligence and power, was on the border between Arathor and the Foothills. By the time the First War broke out, she had the honourary rank of Knight but had not been granted any lands, as was the custom with the advancement of squad mages. She continued to serve in many of the hotspots during the subsequent Orcish Wars, including the First Battle of Stormwind, and was part of the exodus to Lordaeron. During the period of re-organization and re-arming between the sacking of Stormwind and the assaults on Khaz Modan and Tol Barad, Alleryn was promoted again to the honourary rank of Knight-Captain and placed as advisor to a Field Marshall in command of one of the legions defending the Thandol Span. During that long pitched battle lasting most of the war, she distinguished herself several times for bravery and ruthlessness. At the end of the battle, as resources and troops were brought to bear to contain and slowly push the orcs back into the Dark Portal, Alleryn was granted personal command of a legion herself. Her efforts, along with several dozen other commanders, made the slaughter at the Dark Portal and its subsequent closing possible. Through the intervening years, she rose to pre-eminence, officially becoming a Marshall during a ceremony at the newly re-made Stormwind that also commemorated other veterans of the same battle. As the Third War broke out, catching the newly founded Alliance completely by surprise, Marshall Alleryn and her Legion were deployed to the defense of Alterac and surrounding environs. They were mostly inneffective during this time period, as numbers poured over them. At the conclusion of the Third War, with much of the Alliance still completely clueless about how and why the Legion had left the world until much later (save for Lady Proudmoore's Theramore Guard) the armed forces were re-purposed for rebuilding purposes. Alleryn was attached to a Kirin Tor circle that entered the ruined city of Dalaran. While there, she recovered a grimoire from the corpse of a slain Dreadlord. While perusing the volume, she discovered many of the rituals and spells she had learned during her formative years speaking with the night in Dalaran, along with many more, and far more advanced arcane secrets. Her love of power emerged, and she took her first steps down the path of shadow and flame in those otherwise unremarkable years. Much later, when warlocks had become a recognized force in the world, Alleryn was again promoted during a long struggle in the Alterac peaks against a small orcish tribe engaged in a guerilla campaign against the established dwarves in that region known as the Frostwolf Clan. Dream Journal Entry 1 So, I went to one of the brigade's diviners today about those nightmares I've been having ever since... I don't know quite what to call what happened, still. I was chained naked to a Fel-ridden tree and violated. That sounds like rape, but I can't justify using that word even in my head. Anyway, so far I haven't really noticed any changes except the dreams I mentioned. She said, write them down. It'll help you deal. She thinks I actually got raped, of course. That's what I said happened. Its not that uncommon, except for the part where they didn't find me stuffed into a snowbank with my throat cut. That's pretty unusual. Powerful stuff, those dreams. I'll tell you about the one I had last night--it flashed around a bit, so bear with me. It started with fire raining out of the clouds. Yeah, cliche. Typical, I mean. I'm a warlock, I can make that happen anytime I want, really. But the size, the breadth--just the sheer fury and scale in the nightmare was the sort of thing even the dumbest, most idiotic, most powermad fools on Azeroth haven't even managed to have a wet dream about yet. I literally watched a whole forest go up. When does that make sense? After that, I looked down, in the dream. I saw hands, flesh rotted away leaving bare bone in most of the joint areas and around the fingertips. They were blackened, like I played with fire all the time minus any protection. Weird Fel-runes were carved into the flesh of the wrists and lower arms. They reminded me of the Chaos Bolt spell on paper but made that look like a three-year old's campfire experiment, with all the relative complexity of an icefire compared to two sticks being rubbed together. I look up and I'm staring into the eyes of a human woman. She's dark--much darker than I am. I remember her startling green eyes and amazing presence. I'd seen her before, for those brief years where I was an initiate in Dalaran. I couldn't remember her name, but I knew she had been well-placed in the Mageocracy. High mid-level, pure arcane. Last I heard, she was stationed in the Basin. Well, when I say stationed I mean more like, a high level archmage very kindly requested she head to the Basin and do some... "research" for a number of years. They might have even mentioned the Defilers in passing, who had actually been just a minor faction back before Dalaran had become some demon's personal sandcastle. But her assignment was obvious. Support the Human Alliance's cause against the forest burners' initiative. In any case, I watched those bony hands reach up, the right stuffing the woman's mouth and nose, the left somehow managing to gather both of the woman's wrists up together. Eventually, she stopped moving. Flash. A dark skinned corpse. I woke up screaming, you know. I always do. The sorts of things I see in those dreams... Every time I picture that Forsaken turning into black dust and drifting away, with the iron chains that had bound me to the tree behind me doing the same at the same time... I shudder. This... this thing was a monster. But in the back of my mind, a voice is whispering that it had its reasons. Category:Characters